The opportunity to personalize features in a mobile vehicle is ever increasing as the automobile is being transformed into a communications platform as well as a transportation platform. Projections are that in the future many new cars will include some type of telematics unit to provide wireless communication and location-based services. These services may be accessed through interfaces such as voice-recognition computer applications, touch-screen computer displays, computer keyboards, or buttons on the dashboard or console of a vehicle.
Currently, telematics service call centers, in-vehicle compact disk (CD) or digital video display (DVD) media, web portals, and voice-enabled phone portals provide various types of location services, including driving directions, stolen vehicle tracking, traffic information, weather reports, restaurant guides, ski reports, road condition information, accident updates, street routing, landmark guides, and business finders.
For example, traffic and driving directions are accessible through a voice portal that uses incoming number identification to generate location information based on the area code or prefix of the phone number, or to access location information stored in a user's profile associated with the phone number. In some embodiments, users are prompted to enter more details through a voice interface. Other examples are web and wireless portals that offer location-based services such as maps and driving directions: the user enters both a start and end addresses. Some of these services have a voice interface.
When a cellular communication device, such as for example, an embedded or in-vehicle phone or a telematics unit, initiates a call, a cellular communication channel is typically established between the cellular communication device and the wireless carrier system. Prior to permitting the initiated call to be placed through the wireless carrier system, the wireless carrier system performs a check on behalf of the service provider to ensure that the cellular device is registered for service with the service provider. If the wireless carrier system discovers a problem with the cellular device registration, registration of the cellular device is denied and the call is not allowed.
If the telematics unit was denied a call while attempting to perform a telematics unit function that is transparent to the mobile vehicle user, the mobile vehicle user may not know that many telematics services may be unavailable due to wireless communication failure. If the mobile vehicle user discovers the failed wireless communication problems when attempted to place a call using the embedded or in-vehicle phone, the user may not know how to begin to resolve the wireless communication failure. The mobile vehicle user may take the vehicle into a dealership so that a trained technician can troubleshoot the failed communication problems. This can be time consuming and expensive for the mobile vehicle user if the mobile vehicle is no longer under warranty. This may lead to customer dissatisfaction with the telematics services, the mobile vehicle and/or the mobile vehicle manufacturer. If the mobile vehicle is still under warranty, the repair costs are borne by the vehicle dealership or vehicle manufacturer.
It is desirable, therefore, to provide methods and computer usable mediums to perform wireless communication diagnostics responsive to a failed transmission signal, thus overcoming the limitations described above.